Phase-change perovskite tunable microlaser

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel tunable microlaser using phase-change perovskite metasurfaces that serve as both gain medium and cavity, enabling fast, broad, and hysteretic spectral tuning for advanced optical applications.

Contribution

It presents the first demonstration of a phase-change perovskite metasurface laser with integrated gain and cavity functions, enabling dynamic spectral and mode tuning.

Findings

Achieved >15 nm spectral tunability in the near-infrared.

Demonstrated fast tuning rate of 1.35 nm/K.

Observed hysteretic optical bistability and mode hopping.

Abstract

Since the invention of the laser, adoption of new gain media and device architectures has provided solutions to a variety of applications requiring specific power, size, spectral, spatial, and temporal tunability. Here we introduce a fundamentally new type of tunable semiconductor laser based on a phase-change perovskite metasurface that acts simultaneously as gain medium and optical cavity. As a proof of principle demonstration, we fabricate a subwavelength-thin perovskite metasurface supporting bound states in the continuum (BICs). Upon the perovskite structural phase transitions, both its refractive index and gain vary substantially, inducing fast (1.35 nm/K rate) and broad spectral tunability (>15 nm in the near-infrared), deterministic spatial mode hopping between polarization vortexes, and hysteretic optical bistability of the microlaser. These features highlight the uniqueness of phase-change perovskite tunable lasers, which may find wide applications in compact and low-cost optical multiplexers, sensors, memories, and LIDARs.